Your Narrative-Writing

or: The Fickle House of Memory

How is it what we used to have

Before it went away,

Is colored far more richly than

The things left here to stay?

The missing of what isn’t here

—What came and faded out—

By distance seems the best to frame

What life is all about.

It’s nostalgia for what never was

—For that which could have been—

That feeds a need for meaning

And frames all that we’ve seen.

That longing for a narrative

Digs powerfully deep

And colors recollections

With a slow and steady creep.

“Now” is random meaningless

But with enough reflection,

You can conjure a trajectory

And trace your life’s direction.

Subconsciously we’re writing

New drafts with passing years,

And sometime it’s surprising

Just where the story steers.

So this is how I see it:

The things we face each day?

They’re lifeless lines in black and white

Scratched in blind array.

But in later introspection

We slowly color in,

And the schemas that we use

Explain what we have been.